Tudor United SportsCar prototype news...

Since this subject is of interest here, I'm a little shocked that this board is behind by a few days...

Over the weekend, the modifications to DP cars was released- http://www.racer.com/2014-tudor-united-sportscar-prototype-regulations-released/article/317060/

Not overly shocking- the rules try to speed up DP cars compared to P2 cars. But clearly at a decent expense to update the cars. New tunnels, new rear under aero, new rear wing, new HIGH end brakes, new HIGH end shocks, lower weight, clutch open, throttle open, etc..

Estimates have it at $350- 500k to update a DP car. Yikes.

P2 cars will be slowed by requiring LeMans aero packages at some tracks.

The high budget teams have elected to stay- http://www.racer.com/ganassi-sticking-with-daytona-prototypes-for-tuscc/article/317408/

Not all that surprising.

Although, the Starworks team is considering dropping to P2. (same article)

While Gainsco is considering a break http://www.racer.com/gainscobob-stallings-racing-considering-hiatus/article/317235/ And will let their drivers change if they find a better opportunity.

So this will get interesting.

Almost sounds like they are attempting to obsolete the DP cars.

bravenrace wrote: Almost sounds like they are attempting to obsolete the DP cars.

Kinda. There will be a new "DP" car in 2016. Which is part of the angusih whether a team should invest the money to upgrade for 2 seasons.

What that will look like is a mystery. And the FIA + FCO are still up in the air what endurance and sports car racing will look like in the next few years.

I guess I should look back on the 80's and remember that very, very few IMSA cars were running at LeMans, few teams seemed to care, and we had some of the best road racing in the world. So all is not lost if this does not line up with LeMans.

Don't you think the competitors had a say in this?

As soon as you get out of the most "grassroots" types of racing, you get this effect where the established teams want rules that will turn racing into a nice stable, gentlemanly spending competition, with no rowdy riff-raff upsetting the order of things with their boorish "ingenuity" and "driving skill." You can see it in everything from F1 down to your local stage rally. It gets so bad that things become predictable and boring, then there's a big rule shake-up, and it goes around in a cycle like that.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

yea, but what can you say if you were a competitor?

the goal is to make the DP cars faster than the P2 cars, all without making the P2 cars not legal for LeMans.

Since you can't come up with a totally new DP car- especially thanks to the recent investment, all they were left with were- what will make this faster. More power, more downforce, more braking. That's what they got.

It's a tough situation to blend the two series together.

It is a tough pickle: How do you merge the two formats together? Of course, when GTP was simply killed off at the end of 1993, that sucked even more.

In reply to alfadriver:

Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

I'm ok with that.

Every rules change costs money...
Do you want to go faster for more money or slower, or worse yet go home for no money...

mazdeuce wrote: I'm ok with that.

Oh believe me, I am too.....

I just read this from Mike Hull on Racer:

“For us, I think we're going to stay the course,” Ganassi Racing general manager Mike Hull told RACER. “I don't know if that's the right choice at this point, because if everybody in DP decides to go P2 racing, we might be left as one of the last teams standing.

“I spoke with (2013 winning DP team owner) Wayne Taylor, and he's sticking with DP, and did say most of the Corvette DP teams are likely to stay as Corvette DP teams, so there should be a category for us to race against P2 cars. And we're at least committed through 2014 with a semblance of [the car] we currently race because the rules won't be the same next year.”

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

Well, unless a miracle occurs, P1 cars are going to be faster than DP, since they are much quicker than P2 cars, and DP cars will end up barely faster than P2 cars.

Most of the time.

Not sure how that compares with the speed of an old CanAm car.

It looks like only the new diffuser and duel element rear wing and mounting are the mandatory at a cost of $75k. The brakes, dampers and diff changes are optional, but will widen the gap between front running and mid field teams. One thing that puzzles me is this paragraph: Dampers, provided they are of an existing style in use, are open. This change is also one that will result in significant investment by DP teams as it has proven to be one of the biggest differentiators in a class where nearly spec cars are utilized. OK, so how has a spec part been one of the things that has already proved to be a big differentiator between the front and back teams???

It’s also puzzling that the DP guys have to pay $75k for their aero kit but the P2 cars only need to spend $13.7k for the LeMans kit.

Another interesting tidbit is where they mention that it may be a price wash to buy an off the shelf new HPD ARX-03b P2 car and engine program as upgrading a DP car and engine lease. As they predict that the P2’s may be faster than the DP’s on some tracks, where the DP’s will have the upper hand on others, I wonder if some of the high $$ teams will run both chassis?

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

Just for fun, I looked it up.

Comparing Mid-Ohio- the great Can Am cars of old peaked in 1973 with the Porsche 917/30. And Mark Donahue set the pole at Mid-Ohio with a 1:20.3, which was a significant drop of 4 seconds from the previous year, set in a 917/10 of 1:24.1.

On the other hand, the DP cars ran Mid-Ohio this past June. The top 10 were all DP cars, and all of them were 1:18.* or faster. And we know that P1 cars are faster.

In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

alfadriver wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

Just for fun, I looked it up. Comparing Mid-Ohio- the great Can Am cars of old peaked in 1973 with the Porsche 917/30. And Mark Donahue set the pole at Mid-Ohio with a 1:20.3, which was a significant drop of 4 seconds from the previous year, set in a 917/10 of 1:24.1. On the other hand, the DP cars ran Mid-Ohio this past June. The top 10 were all DP cars, and all of them were 1:18.* or faster. And we know that P1 cars are faster. In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

Data from a totally different track and I'm not 100% sure, but it seems as if the track hasn't changed....

Road America 1973- Mark Donahue- 917/30- 1:57.5 pole
2013- DP- 2:01.9 pole
2013- P1- 1:51.6 pole

So at a much more open track, the CanAm car is faster than a DP car. But not exactly close to the P1 car. Mark's time would have put him on the pole of the PC class, a second an a half slower than the last P2 car.

alfadriver wrote: In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

You can't undo 40 years of aero learning no matter how hard you regulate.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

alfadriver wrote: In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

You can't undo 40 years of aero learning no matter how hard you regulate.

That, and tire compounds too.

Donohue. Two o's.

Not often do I toot my own horn, and realistically, I can only barely do it on this, but I did work on getting this engine to production quite a bit:

http://www.indystar.com/viewart/20131105/SPORTS0107/311050072/Ganassi-Racing-moves-sports-car-program-Ford
or
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-ganassi-racing-felix-sabates-210000551.html

Ganassi joins Sabates in using the 3.5l Ecoboost engine for racing next year. This is the SHO/Flex/MKT/MKS version, and not the one in the F150.

alfadriver wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

Just for fun, I looked it up. Comparing Mid-Ohio- the great Can Am cars of old peaked in 1973 with the Porsche 917/30. And Mark Donahue set the pole at Mid-Ohio with a 1:20.3, which was a significant drop of 4 seconds from the previous year, set in a 917/10 of 1:24.1. On the other hand, the DP cars ran Mid-Ohio this past June. The top 10 were all DP cars, and all of them were 1:18.* or faster. And we know that P1 cars are faster. In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

In relation to modern machines......How much faster were they than everything else? Thats what they need again.

Also, I thought P1 no longer had a place in this series(WGAF about the maybe 5-6 cars)

yamaha wrote:

alfadriver wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to alfadriver: Basically it sounds like they are wanting the DP cars to be as fast as the can am cars of lore

Just for fun, I looked it up. Comparing Mid-Ohio- the great Can Am cars of old peaked in 1973 with the Porsche 917/30. And Mark Donahue set the pole at Mid-Ohio with a 1:20.3, which was a significant drop of 4 seconds from the previous year, set in a 917/10 of 1:24.1. On the other hand, the DP cars ran Mid-Ohio this past June. The top 10 were all DP cars, and all of them were 1:18.* or faster. And we know that P1 cars are faster. In other words, DP cars are already faster than the CanAm cars of lore.

In relation to modern machines......How much faster were they than everything else? Thats what they need again. Also, I thought P1 no longer had a place in this series(WGAF about the maybe 5-6 cars)

That's tough to answer. USAC cars weren't running at Mid Ohio in 1973. The prior fastest lap mentioned above of 1:24.4 was matched on June 4th 73 by Brian Redman in a F5000 Lola T-330. Now at the time there wasn't much to choose between F5000 cars and F1 cars in outright performance so you could definitly argue that Can Am was the fastest of all. So, you can say that Can-Am cars were 5% faster than the 'fastest' cars of the day.

Looking at modern times. The new DP lap record was set this year at Mid Ohio of 1:17.745 Vs the outright lap record set by Dario in a Champ car in 1999 of 1:05:347 (Incidentaly this years fastest Indy car lap was slower at 1:06:743). So right now DP cars are 20% slower than the 'fastest' cars out there, which are still certainly slower than F1 cars.

Now, we can compare ALMS to F1 at TCOTA. This year the ALMS lap record was set by Graf/Luhr at 1:53.721 in an HPD. Last years F1 lap record was set by, well guess who? at 1:39.347. So for a P1 car we can say they are 14% slower.

These are only a couple of data points, but modern sports cars are slower anyway you look at it.

That's not a bad thing, I found late 80's F1 races and cars far more exciting to watch and much better to look at as cars than todays vehicles. They moved around a lot more and were more spectacular. It's impossible to do an exact comparison, even Monaco has changed slightly, but it's close. In 1988 Senna did a 1:26.321 (the epic and famous quali lap was 1:23.998) Vs the current lap record of 1:14.439 set by HerShumi in 2004. So you could say with a fudge factor that F1 was 10-20% slower then than now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the ultimate speed of the cars isn't everything. The look, the sound the spectacle, the racing is what makes it. I think the DP cars have come a long way. I'm not a fan of the current LMP cars which are single seaters in drag. Being an old fart I hark back to the classic days of Group C, Gropu 6, even CAnAm etc. To me the DP cars have a stronger visual heritage link to those and when I've seen them have provided good on track action.

In reply to yamaha:

Not sure where you are going with that... seems like you changed your mind once it was shown that the DP cars are faster than CanAm cars. Which didn't say anything about relative speed or whatever.

Outside of the CanAms, I can't recall any prototype series that was the fastest series out there. (except, perhaps the 1.5l Grand Prix era)

And considering that the CanAm racing was actually really bad, I'm not so sure anyone would want to go back to that. I'm not really sure how we look back on the "golden years" which produced multiple lap margin victories over a 500 mile race.

We tend to forget this when we think back to the good old days. I remember watching more than a few races as a kid where there were only a few cars running at the end and only one or two of them on the lead lap. From a fan's perspective racing of almost every type is better now than it used to be.

alfadriver wrote: Not often do I toot my own horn, and realistically, I can only barely do it on this, but I did work on getting this engine to production quite a bit: http://www.indystar.com/viewart/20131105/SPORTS0107/311050072/Ganassi-Racing-moves-sports-car-program-Ford or http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chip-ganassi-racing-felix-sabates-210000551.html Ganassi joins Sabates in using the 3.5l Ecoboost engine for racing next year. This is the SHO/Flex/MKT/MKS version, and not the one in the F150.

Still, this is the new news that I tooting my own horn for!

Eric, congrats on being part of the engine team.

On the closeness of the racing. I don't recall people complaining when Clarke or Stewart won races by minuets. I was never bored in 88 when the McLaren's won 15 or 16 races. I think NASCAR has sold people on the idea that multiple lead changes per lap equate to good racing. Also back in the CanAm heyday, the races weren't televised. People either went to the track or read the reports and looked at cool pictures. A large part of watching a race live is just experiencing the cars and drivers. Watching a massively powerful car being wrestled round a track by a maestro is entertaining regardless of if he's 5 seconds or 55 seconds ahead of his/her closest rival. Reading a report describing that in a magazine a week or two later, who cares how close the next guy was?